


nerd

by decidingdolan



Series: one more bite [2]
Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV), Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
Genre: Clay-Hannah alone time, F/M, Fluff, Introspection, Monet's., Second Person, angsty fluff, dessert and hot chocolate time, it's a Clay-Hannah thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 23:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10887354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decidingdolan/pseuds/decidingdolan
Summary: hot chocolates and random Shakespeare quotes. It's Clay and Hannah at Monet's.





	nerd

 

 

 

  

 

_It’s nothing; I’m here; I’m still here._

 

_\--_ Arthur Rimbaud, from [Selected Poems & Letters; “What do they mean to us,”](http://violentwavesofemotion.tumblr.com/tagged/arthur%20rimbaud)

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

"You like Monet's."

 

She plopped down opposite you, two hot chocolate mugs and a plate of miniature round Oreo cheesecake placed on the table.

 

"Who doesn't?" she shrugged, bemused. "Hot chocolates are a scientifically proven cure-all, I'll have you know."

 

You raised an eyebrow, pretended surprise. "Ha," you said, grabbed a mug and sipped the brown elixir. "So they've been lying to us all along."

 

"They?" she asked, leaned in from across the table, tone curious and imbued with much frivolous formality as she could muster. (You're in your own worlds sometimes. Your own games. Your own rules. Where reality was discounted, existed on a parallel timeline, and chips fell when you commanded them to.) "Whoever do you mean?"

 

"Well," you rested your head against the velvet sofa, hands clasped at your lap. "Vicious propaganda against sweets. I've no idea why they do it."

 

You grinned, chose to see the mug as half-full (but only, only because she was there).

 

"Fuck the haters," she chuckled, equally serious (She was always on the same note as you. The same page. The same imagined wavelengths. You just got on.) and sipping her hot chocolate (Belgian, with a dash of milk. Her so-called secret order never varied).

 

"Any fool who's against hot chocolates clearly hasn't had Monet's."

 

"Exactly."

 

" _Exactly._ "

 

You met her eyes, satisfied. And she never did flinch, you'll give her that. It's you, it's all on you, to shy away and rob yourself the chance to look in those eyes fully, drink them in, drink her in.

 

She's your hot chocolate. You'd realized that now. She was.

 

"And this cake," she forked a thin slice, tasted it, and her eyes drifted shut. "Mhm. _Divine._ "

 

Couldn't suppress the smirk breaking at your lips' corner. Her exaggerated breathless, blissed out voice sent blood rushing down your jeans and heat spooling around your nerves.

 

Oh.

 

_Oh._

(And you shifted in your seat, coughed a bit, hoped she didn’t notice.)

 

She rolled her eyes at you, palm gesturing at the cake as if presenting a precious trinket. "It's such a sin for their homemade bakery to all taste so good."

 

You nodded, reaching over to try a bit for yourself.

 

The cake’s light fluff spread across your tongue, intercut with dark chocolatey drops and oreo crumbles. The bite was small, the taste overwhelming, saccharine.

 

Hannah might not have been exaggerating.

 

“O Sweet,” you recited, smiling as you faced her complacent eyes (you loved to let her win), “Give me my sin again.”

 

She hummed, reached out a hand and ruffled your hair, “You’re such a _nerd_ , Helmet.”

 

Nerves.

 

You rarely went to Monet’s now that she’s gone. The café stood bustling, the small-town’s central meeting place and loitering grounds for high schoolers after classes. An inviting caffeine aroma followed you through the doors once entered, but you opted for hot chocolate instead, her tribute.

 

You wondered if Alex ever finished working his way down the menu. For a café named after an artist, Monet’s offerings were eclectic and simple, whichever route a drinker may choose. Hannah was often the latter, dead set, straight on her paths and rarely straying from her choice.

 

Empty chairs unnerved you. To sit where she used to, to imagine her there opposite you, eyes smiling at you from her mug’s brim and lips tainted with chocolate.

 

“I’m a fool,” you’re muttering to yourself, dessert spoon gingerly stirring the lukewarm hot chocolate in your mug, “You should know that.”

 

Because Monet’s hot chocolate _sucked_ without her, an empty brown glob you couldn’t finish. Hot chocolates’ healing powers seemed to disappear with its most fervent, devoted believer.

 

You scrunched your nose, hand flattening down your hair where her fingers were tangled in, and doubted she ever realized what exactly she was doing to you.

 

Or maybe you’d been the naïve one half this time.

 

“Oh come on,” you raised a hand, “It’s Shakespeare. Everybody knows.”

 

“It’s love,” she declared, downing her mug and lips stretched wide. There’s something about her unabashedly throwing the word in your face. Your head was light, your heart drowning in self-manifested ambiguity.

 

“It’s tragic,” you said, and you could have punched yourself for concluding her sentence with a downer.

 

Love. Tragedy. All too soon and gone too young. Mail in a shoebox of 7 pre-recorded cassette tapes and we’ve got ourselves a classic.

 

Juliet was thirteen, and you should have known better.

 

Hannah was—the sentence hurt to think aloud—sixteen, and you were too busy being a typical teenage boy.

 

You’re with her, your guard let down, and overdosing on sugar was the next most natural cause of death in the world.

 

“It’s why people remember,” she continued, slicing the last of the miniature cheesecake (should have ordered two, in retrospect. It was one of Monet’s best, and an original Hannah Baker discovery).

 

“Imagine that,” she mused, licking her lips of the last sugary traces, “People remembering your words after you’re gone.”

 

_Touche._

 

But you’d never wished it to be this way, not ever, not for her. Imagine the number of poems she could have written (and published, publicly) for people to rave about.

 

Imagine that.

 

You scratched your forehead, stared at her. “We still drinking hot chocolate?” you asked, “Is it just me or the tone’s gone morbid?”

 

She laughed, and all the coffee shop sounds could not play over those loops in your head. “It’s you,” she replied, giggles in her voice, “Check your sources before you quote next time, huh?”

 

You wrote phrases in your journals these days. Quotes and jokes and poems she would have liked. Quotes and monologues and speeches marked as signal boosts to get you through. To get you out. To push you on. From her.

 

“These _are_ the droids you’re looking for,” you deadpanned in a silly voice, and she smiled.

 

She started watching _Star Wars_ with you – the first three, the basics. The good ones. You’d sit, popcorn bucket in between, focused on the screen at her place.

 

You got a kick out of observing her reactions.

 

(She still didn’t know.)

 

You hadn’t quote _Star Wars_ since before the tapes. Your hot chocolate’s finished, and all that remained of Hannah at Monet’s were her scribbled initials in the FML’s hardcover.

 

“Imagine what it’d be like if people quote you, you know,” she said suddenly, an afterthought to your persistent habit of quoting. “Must’ve really affected them in some way.”

 

_Honestly, Hannah, honestly._

_You have no idea._

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for stopping by, reading, and reviewing!
> 
> Your comments mean the world.
> 
> x
> 
> Your ever humble fanfic writer


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